Apple releases iOS 27, supporting iPhone 11 and later, with a new Siri AI and a Liquid Glass control button

Apple has officially released the iOS 27 update, supporting iPhone 11 and later, packed with new features from Siri AI to Liquid Glass and numerous system performance improvements.

Faster across the whole system

The highlight every user will feel immediately is increased speed. iOS 27 smooths out animations, app launches, and AirDrop file transfers, as well as photo capture, bringing up the keyboard, the App Library, and switching Home Screen pages. iMessage syncing between devices is more reliable, with a system that automatically resends messages on error, and switching between Wi-Fi and cellular networks is smoother than before. These foundational improvements are available on every supported iPhone model.

Siri AI

Siri AI is the biggest Siri upgrade in years, supporting continuous back-and-forth conversation similar to ChatGPT or Claude. Unlike typical AI chatbot apps, Siri can directly access personal data on the device — messages, email, photos, and various apps.

Example commands include searching for an email, photo, or file someone sent by name, date, time, or location; creating Home automations, such as locking all doors at midnight; adding information to Contacts; finding a password from the Passwords app; and recommending restaurants or activities the user is likely to enjoy.

Visual Intelligence is now built into the Camera app, accessible by swiping to the new Siri mode, usable for things like checking a food's nutritional info or calculating how much each person owes from a photo of a receipt. Write with Siri works system-wide from the keyboard, helping draft messages, adjust tone or phrasing, write in the user's own style by analyzing past emails and messages, and suggest automatic grammar fixes.

Photos, design, and other apps

The Clean Up tool in the Photos app has improved significantly, removing unwanted objects more naturally than before, with 2 new tools: Extend, which uses AI to expand an image's edges, and Reframe, which changes the viewpoint or composition.

iOS 27 adds a Liquid Glass slider to adjust the transparency of buttons, toolbars, and menus, found at Settings > Appearance > Liquid Glass. Safari now supports building Extensions with natural-language commands, automatic tab categorization, and alerts when web content changes. The Home app gets HomeKit Secure Video recording in 2K and 4K, plus AI features that describe events at home and let users search videos using natural language (requires an iCloud+ plan of 2TB or more).

Users of AirPods 4, AirPods 5, AirPods Pro 2, AirPods Pro 3, and AirPods Max 2 get a Custom EQ feature to adjust mid, high, and low tones, and the Shortcuts app is now easier to use — just describe what you want in natural language and let AI build it.

How to update

Go to Settings > General > Software Update and wait for iOS 27 to appear, or wait for a notification from Apple. Supported on iPhone 11 and all newer models.

Source: Techhaus Thailand (citing MacRumors)